


in the dark

by princegrantaire



Series: little by little [1]
Category: Green Lantern (Comics), Justice Society of America (Comics)
Genre: 1930s, Canon Backstory, Character Study, First Kiss, First Time, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Canon, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:48:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28314063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princegrantaire/pseuds/princegrantaire
Summary: Mostly, as he’s doing now, Alan’s content to settle for the long haul on the rough floor of the boiler room, back against the wall and legs stretched out in front of him. He’s found a bizarre air of comfort in the sounds of the locomotive in the quiet night, its lurches and vibrations, knows it all like the back of his hand.(Alan meets Jimmy. Or: what was lost in the train crash.)
Relationships: Alan Scott/James Henton
Series: little by little [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2044231
Kudos: 10





	in the dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slaapkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slaapkat/gifts).



> this is by no means a christmas fic but it IS a christmas gift for my bestest & most beloved friend in the whole wide world, @slaapkat! MERRY CHRISTMAS, OL' CHUM, I LOVE YA!!!!!!!!!
> 
> the only context required here is a general familiarity with alan's origin (all american comics 1939 #16 and countless other versions) and the alan story in the green lantern 80th anniversary special (2020), which i swiped some dialogue from to make it fit better within continuity
> 
> more importantly, jimmy henton's always been a part of alan's origin story and in all-american comics (1939) #26, alan even calls him a "dear friend" but their now-canon relationship comes from the 80th anniversary (and hey, check out some injustice: year zero too! they're married in that one!) so i thought i would expand a little bit on What Came Before
> 
> ENJOY!

“Henton, right?”

Jimmy’s no more than twenty, an inch shorter than Alan and a little mousy about it. He blends in, is all. Alan knows a Gotham accent when he hears one though, it’s why he’s wasting his break on the newest addition to their not-so-little crew, sweating from the work and the sweltering sun and sparing a backwards glance for the miles of railroad tracks yet to be repaired. It’s slow going. It’s good enough money, too.

“Yeah,” Jimmy says, looking up from a carefully packed lunch-box like he’s not expected the interruption. He’s still all smiles, dimples and everything. It’s bizarrely disarming, more so when he holds out a hand for Alan to shake.

After a moment, Alan even does. Firm grip, doesn’t linger. “Scott,” he offers, sits right there on the edge of the tracks as Jimmy takes it upon himself to scoot aside.

“That your first name?” Jimmy’s asking like he’s sure of the answer already.

“No,” Alan laughs and it comes easier than he thought he would. There’s a familiarity to Jimmy -- it could be the accent or the way he’s the only kid his age around here, even if Alan’s an old hand at it by now. “It’s Alan.”

“Pleased to meetcha, Alan,” Jimmy says around a mouthful of sandwich, seemingly eager to dig in. He’s rough around the edges, same as what passes for present company, but there’s few reasons anyone goes into this backbreaking work. Alan wonders whether Jimmy’s got a girl at home, though he sees no glint of a ring in the afternoon heat. “I’m Jimmy but you knew that, huh?” and before Alan’s got a chance to make his excuses, the usual charade of _I’m a good listener_ , Jimmy pushes on, “Say, you’re the guy Mr. Hall wants for an apprentice, aren’t you?”

“If we get that bridge contract, I am,” Alan allows.

It’s nearly unnerving to fall into the ease of an unplanned back-and-forth with a man he’s only just properly met. Alan’s not shy as much as too aware of an unknowable fire burning deep inside; some ill-defined, unwanted quality that’s left him out of step with the world. By Jimmy’s side, it’s like he’s come back into sharp relief, no longer caught in a phantom of an existence.

They take it from there.

\---

Along the many days spent with Jimmy on the tracks, chattering endlessly about nothing in particular, removed from the other men and the kind of talk he’s never learned to navigate, Alan finds there’s a great deal to be learned about James Henton and his winning smile.

As it happens, there’s no girl waiting at home -- _Not unless you count my ma_ , Jimmy had laughed -- and, as suspected, he’s grown up on Gotham’s streets. Hell, he’s done the paper route and the odd jobs and the whole shebang. It’s all startlingly familiar, even if Alan’s started earlier, if necessity had hit sooner.

“You don’t talk much about your folks,” Jimmy says, not unkind, one night when they’re settling down in the temporary barracks housing the workers, a month or two after that fateful afternoon.

Alan, down to his undershirt, feels more exposed than he’s got any right to. It’s not a low blow, it’s not a blow of any kind. For the longest time, it registers as little else. Too close, he thinks, he’s gotten too close. Alan has avoided lasting friendships, it strikes him that he’s sorely unqualified for one. “I suppose I don’t,” he mumbles, feeling abruptly and absurdly out of place in the bunk across from Jimmy’s. They’re not alone, no one’s paying them much mind.

“I didn’t mean any--”

“It’s fine,” Alan says and even believes it, “I know you didn’t.” He’s spoken the words before, a vague shuffling of the sympathy card. This isn’t that. “My dad died in the war, I never met ‘im.” And here’s where the _look_ usually comes, where Alan knows this absence has often been accepted as an unintended explanation for the way he is -- the peculiarities beneath that all-American blue-eyed, blond-haired facade. Jimmy merely waits, attentive beyond politeness. “Mom isn’t-- she took it hard.”

Not strictly untrue. Alan’s mother has been in the asylum for too long now, it might very well be the grave.

“Jeez, Al, I’m... real sorry to hear that.”

Alan startles at the hand on his bare shoulder. He blinks at Jimmy, doesn’t see anything but the usual warmth. Relief settles heavy in his stomach, unfamiliar in its weight. He’s not supposed to like it, this air of intimacy coiling tight around him until Alan can’t breathe, almost tangible in its allure. It can’t-- _doesn’t_ mean a thing. “It’s fine,” is what Alan gasps out, an echo that has him sounding lost.

If Jimmy notices it, he keeps it to himself. “You should come down to Patton after we’re done with the tracks,” he says, quiet and firm, “I told ya, we moved down there right before I took this job, haven’t even gotten a chance to really see the place. It’d be nice to have you around.”

And just like that, this bizarre fear digging at Alan shatters to pieces. Jimmy’s got a knack for it.

“Might just hold you to that.”

It’s not a _no_ , Alan wants to cling to the possibility bad enough that he aches with it. The offer’s unheard of in itself and the kindness in Jimmy’s eyes -- which is to say, the lack of pity -- isn’t too far off either. “C’mon, let’s get some rest, that wake-up call at dawn’s not lookin’ so good,” he adds, trying on a smile for size.

\---

A closeness bordering on dangerous renders them inseparable in the ensuing months. The work has worn Alan down, twenty-one in October and steeped in the rote movements of hard labour since sixteen, but there’s a touch of sunshine to Jimmy, a sort of conscious dedication to the brighter side of life that gets Alan smiling like nothing else. He wouldn’t, even on his best days, consider himself pleasant company. It’s Jimmy’s consistent presence that baffles, rather than his own growing dependency on it.

That, too, carries a whiff of danger.

When the railroad tracks repairs that’ve carried them all over come to a long-awaited end and that coveted bridge contract is won and summarily completed, Jimmy gets a week’s leave to check on the home front and his mother. It’s not uncommon, it stings all the same.

“You sure you don’t wanna come?” Jimmy asks, third time in the past hour and with the kinda finality that might get one thinking he’s shipping out in the morning. In his own selfish way, Alan’s glad it seems _that_ severe a sentence to Jimmy, too. They’re sat in the alleyway behind an undersized train station on Opal City’s outskirts -- _New Opal_ , the booklet Alan’s picked up on a whim calls these stirrings of expansion -- and in the half-light of dusk, they’ve taken to trading smokes back and forth.

It’s the last stop before Alan is meant to take the first train back to Gotham to see Mr. John Hall about that apprenticeship and Jimmy’s leaving for Patton. One week. It shouldn’t hurt so bad.

“I wanna, you know I do, Jim, but--”

“Mr. Hall,” Jimmy finishes and his smile’s stretched thin. There’s understanding there though, right underneath dashed hopes.

He holds out his cigarette and though they’ve been sharing since they’ve bid the crew goodbye, a guarded hesitance overtakes Jimmy. The slight tremor to his hand betrays too much. Alan knows, all at once, what he’s being offered. His world’s at stake, he tells himself, content in this Garden of Eden he’s stumbled into blindly but tempted to lean in all the same. If he does, and he _does_ , any semblance of pretence falls to pieces. Alan takes the cigarette between his lips, hollows out his cheeks around it and lets Jimmy hold it for him as he inhales. Time slows before it halts. Jimmy’s eyes, gone wide, stay fixed on Alan’s. Warm, dark brown on an icy blue that’s at risk of thawing.

Alan turns his head to exhale, watches the smoke dissipate in the night sky and only then does he look back at Jimmy; a muted, mutual awe grows between them. They could forgo the cigarettes, he thinks, bordering on hysteria, they could just--

There’s no telling what Alan wants.

For one thing, he expects to get decked. It’s a ridiculous thought, a last nail in the coffin of the possibility that Jimmy _isn’t_ on the same page. Nevertheless, Alan can’t bear to condemn Jimmy to a life he knows so little about, can barely withstand the burnt of this sudden realisation. He plucks the cigarette from Jimmy’s hand with an unexplainable urgency, takes a couple puffs of his own before he hands it back with shaking fingers. They don’t have to discuss it. What’s transpired here seems obvious.

“I could talk to Mr. Hall,” Alan starts and can’t tell where he’s going with it until he’s already flung himself off some unseen parapet, “I mean, if-- if you wanted a job on the train, I think they’re missing a fireman. We could--” _see each other again_. Saying it would be a step too far.

And Jimmy jumps at the offer like there’s nothing else he’d rather do, like the work’s not grueling and endless. Alan has done it before, he’d help every step of the way if it meant having him close.

With the bridge finished, it’s just remained a matter of that first journey over it. Alan’s eager for it, the allure of the open country, the certainty that he’s untouchable just as long as he keeps on moving. In a manner of speaking, it might very well pass for running away, though there’s nothing to be left behind but his own ingrained terror. Jimmy grounds him.

It’s neither giving in nor letting go, it’s _enough_.

\---

“You hear about the whole deal with Dekker?”

The hours in the boiler room are Alan’s favourites. In Mr. Hall’s absence, he’s been tasked with a sort of general inspection of this so-called tight ship they’re supposed to be running, up to and including the passage over the bridge. A couple days away from the main event, he’s been nearly flattered by this unaccountable measure of trust. Alan believes himself capable of fulfilling his duty, though he sticks close to Jimmy, wastes too long shovelling coal into the firebox and thinking of what could’ve been the night with the cigarettes.

Mostly, as he’s doing now, Alan’s content to settle for the long haul on the rough floor of the boiler room, back against the wall and legs stretched out in front of him. He’s found a bizarre air of comfort in the sounds of the locomotive in the quiet night, its lurches and vibrations, knows it all like the back of his hand.

With a distinct lack of passengers and a desire to push through the night, they’ve got the sleeping car at their disposal -- a rare comfort the vast majority of the men have taken full advantage of -- but to Alan, the real luxury is the privacy of the boiler room, the intimacy that fails to be dampened by the smell and the sweat and the overbearing heat. He glances up at Jimmy, tries hard not to avert his eyes. There’s very little choice in being shirtless here, closer to the boiler than anyone ought to be. It’s not the only reason Alan’s mouth’s gone dry, fighting a losing battle with something deep and dark inside.

“What, the guy who lost the contract?” Alan asks, as if he’s not already been briefed on the ins and outs of Albert Dekker’s vengeful streak. “More or less,” he admits, “I don’t think anything’s gonna happen, Jimmy. Hell, he can go to all the papers if he wants, I’m sure we’re gonna be building these babies all over the country sooner or later.”

Jimmy grins and as he steps closer, nudges Alan’s boot with his own. “Feeling optimistic, huh, Mr. Engineer?”

“That’s Mr. Soon-To-Be-Engineer to you,” Alan laughs, louder than intended.

God, Alan’s _suffocating_ in the warmth of it. He can taste it as it slithers down his throat, honey-sweet and too much like everything he’s ever wanted. Too much like hope. He screws his eyes shut against it. Next thing he knows, Jimmy’s tugging him up and close to the boiler. “Lemme show you something,” he says, suddenly serious, a lax grip on Alan’s arm. It burns like nothing short of a brand. They gaze into the fire below and if the meaning is hard to parse, Alan still trembles at the contact.

“Do you ever feel like there’s a-- light inside you?” Jimmy continues, voice uneven with emotion. He nods towards the boiler, a single tilt of his head. “Like that. My ma says a light’s meant to show the way but I don’t know if that’s true. I think-- if I let it out, it’ll burn everyone around me. It’d burn you. Can you see it?”

The hand moves to Alan’s shoulder, rests there as Jimmy swallows down what must be the reality of having said too much. Alan feels like he’s been cut open, the whole of him there for Jimmy to see. Blood and guts and everything in-between.

“I don’t-- I don’t know…”

But he does _know_ , better than most.

“I think you can,” Jimmy says, hardly above a whisper, “I think you know. Alan, I--”

There’s no word for what they are. There’s only drawn blinds and locked doors and quiet terror for men like them. Alan doesn’t think burning is so awful a fate. For Jimmy, he would damn himself. He turns to face him, close enough for shared breaths and the entrancing sight of Jimmy’s eyes turned golden-brown in the flickering fire.

Alan’s never had the courage of his convictions where it counts. It’s Jimmy who takes it further, presses his lips against Alan’s in a burst of contagious desperation. He makes a noise dredged up from the pit of his stomach, visceral and vivid and so frantic that all he can do is cling tight to Jimmy. The kiss is clumsy, overeager. It’s every single thing Alan has ever kept close to his heart. When they part, they’re panting hard and there’s no explaining the sheer _want_ that jolts Alan at Jimmy’s kiss-swollen lips. “I’ve never--” Alan breathes out. His shirt sticks to him with sweat, unpleasant and unnoticed.

“Me neither.” Jimmy is smiling though, breathless with it. Beautiful, too.

Luck has never been something Alan’s had in abundance. The tide must be changing now, the miracle of Jimmy’s smile says as much. He looks and looks and knows he won’t ever get enough of it. Alan can’t afford to assume even a step ahead of time but it’s the heat and an undeniable burst of mania that pushes him to stumble into shoving off his shirt. Breathing comes easier, a touch more manageable. He doesn’t miss Jimmy’s look.

He gets to have this.

The thought nearly proves too much.

When their lips meet again, it’s hard to tell who’s acted first. The unknown deepens, they plunge head-first into it. Alan melts against Jimmy, burning from the inside out like that light has spilled open. It’s on all sides.

The closeness brings an unnerving awareness of Alan’s own body, the way he dwarfs Jimmy in every way that matters -- natural height advantage and too many years spent on the railroad. It gets him flushing more than it should, though he goes easily as he finds himself backed into a wall. This is how it feels, Alan thinks, dying to remember the weight of a man’s body on his, the absurd physicality of Jimmy’s bare chest, his ache for anything Jimmy is willing to give. An undefined hunger tears at him and he gasps at the leg maneuvered between his own.

In the distance, Alan hears the whistle of another passing train, unchanged and familiar with the fast-track of passing miles.

\---

Days later, kneeling in the wreckage of his life, Alan does burn. The fire is green, as unnatural as the man himself. It is the grief that disfigures. Jimmy’s hand grows cold in his.

**Author's Note:**

> some notes & observations for the folks at home:
> 
> \- this takes place in 1939  
> \- mr john hall is alan's employer during the bridge situation, as told in a flashback from all-american comics (1939) #17  
> \- alan's mother is in an asylum as per the green lantern: sleepers novels by christopher priest, specifically the second one  
> \- jimmy lives in patton as per the 80th anniversary special but i like him being from gotham too so you get the best of both worlds  
> \- new opal is a ref to starman (1994) #64  
> \- the ending is obviously The Crash and do read the anniversary for the best possible take on that
> 
> COME FIND ME @UFONAUT ON TUMBLR. I WOULD LOVE YOUR THOUGHTS & OPINIONS


End file.
